Augusto B. Leguia

Augusto Bernardino Leguia y Salcedo (19 February 1863-7 February 1932) was President of Peru from 24 September 1908 to 24 September 1912 (succeeding Jose Pardo and preceding Guillermo Billinghurst) and from 4 July 1919 to 25 August 1930 (succeeding Pardo and preceding Manuel Ponce), as well as Prime Minister of Peru from 24 September 1904 to 1 August 1907 (succeeding Jorge Prado y Ugarteche and preceding Alberto Rey de Castro y Romana).

Biography
Augusto B. Leguia was born in Lambayeque, Peru in 1863, and he served in the army during the War of the Pacific from 1879 to 1881. After the war, he became an insurance executive in the United States, and he returned to Peru as a wealthy man during the 1900s. He entered politics in 1903 as a Civilista Party member, and he served as Prime Minister from 1904 to 1907 and as President from 1908 to 1912. He instituted social and economic reforms in an attempt to industrialize Peru and turn it into a modern capitalist society, and he agreed on fixing the country's borders with Brazil and Bolivia. After leaving office in 1912, he learned banking and finance from the USA and the United Kingdom, and he left the Civilistas. In 1919, Leguia ran for President of Peru, and he launched a military coup in order to prevent the Civilistas from keeping him from power. He promulgated a new and more liberal constitution in 1920, and he also founded the Reformist Democratic Party. He was known to harshly suppress all opposition during his dictatorship, exiling future APRA leader Victor Raul Haya de la Torre and future Communist Party of Peru leader Jose Carlos Mariategui. In 1930, he was overthrown in a coup led by Luis Miguel Sanchez Cerro in response to his failure to save Peru from the Great Depression, and he died at a naval hospital in Callao in 1932.